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Sunday, March 6, 2011

This is Indonesia

When I first came to this country one of the first things I wanted to said to the lady who waited us at the airport was "you pig!" because her burping was out of my range of nice behavior. Soon I realized that everybody in every occasion are burping, farting, picking their teeth, burping some more and still, after 7 months, I can't get used to that and every time when I burp I apologize to the people around me and they look at me like I'm weird.
When we are talking about sense of fashion, oh God, Sonia is having a nightmares, I'm trying not to see it but most of the girls here are dying to be white so they are using whitening lotions, whitening crèmes, sun blocks, they wear gloves when they drive, they wear socks with slippers or sandals and they even have socks with thumb separated so they can easily wear sandals. All the time everybody is telling us that we are beautiful because we are white. The Chinese girls like to wear evening dresses even when they are going out to grab something to eat in food courts or when they are walking around in the shopping malls. Oh yes, shopping malls are the only places Indonesians are walking around. In the streets you will rarely, almost never, see walking paths and they are quite bad and no one is walking on them. Everybody is driving a car, a motorbike or just using bemo's.
Those dresses are usually too shiny, too sparkling and the color of their shoes goes to the shades of silver and gold and for long time I couldn't find shoes for me because all the shoes were glittering and sparkling and of course Indonesian girls have small feet but they like to wear big shoes. So, you will see Indonesian girl in sparkling evening dress with shoes that are 2 size bigger than her feet standing in night club, of course, not dancing because she can't and usually she and her friends are going to get so drunk that they can't stand. Clubbing in Indonesia is privilege of rich people so since bule are rich, which means that bule are going in for free to the clubs because bule are going to spend a lot of money in the club. That is why Sonia and me are going dancing and clubbing quite often since we don't pay entrance and then we don't have any drinks (small bottle of water in Ice Club is 3€) and we just dance.
I come from a country where, when a guy likes you and he invites you out for a drink, you usually don't pay anything and if you insist he might let you pay your bill, but you need to insist really hard on that. Indonesian guys love to be seen with bule, it is their dream and most of them would be eternally happy when they would have bule for girlfriend. So, few times I got invited for a date with Indonesian guy. First time when I said yes he took me to really nice pub and we had few drinks but here drinks are really expensive and I don't drink a lot when I'm going out so I just had one drink. When the bill came, he got out the exact amount of his drinks and gave me the bill to see how much my drink was. Luckily I had some money in my wallet so I could pay it. Next time I had no money and he said that he will pay my drink and I have to give him back the money. I never saw him again.
Tonight I got invited by that guy that I kissed last week in Ice Club to a shopping mall to a really expensive pub that I went once and never again since the cheapest drink over there is like 3€ and that is a juice so I just texted him that I don't have any money so I will not come. After that he called me again and told me to come and I texted him again with the same note and he never answered. In Serbia I would probably get a message like "don't eat shit, come over here, I invited you for a drink I have money". Actually I would never texted a guy who likes me and who invited me out that I don't have money.
The thing is, for everything they do, whatever they say, which is out of this world for European people we just say "This is Indonesia".